Lee Anderson’s Valentine’s Day Grift: A Westminster Side-Hustle

Lee Anderson’s Valentine’s Day Grift: Westminster’s Side-Hustle Culture Lives On

With Love from me to you…

Last month, while the rest of the country was grappling with the relentless squeeze of a stagnant economy, the Reform MP for Ashfield was reportedly busy. According to recent reports, Lee Anderson used his publicly funded parliamentary office to record personalised Valentine’s Day messages for the video-sharing platform Cameo. For a fee of up to £56, voters could buy a “romantic” slice of the Palace of Westminster.

The Charity Shield

Mr Anderson’s spokesperson claims the proceeds were donated to charity, which is a convenient moral shield. However, it ignores the fundamental breach of trust. The rules are clear: parliamentary facilities are for the service of the public, not for commercial content creation. This is not Mr Anderson’s first brush with the Standards Commissioner on this very issue, having previously been warned for filming promotional clips for GB News on the House of Commons roof.

“The Palace of Westminster is a workplace for the people’s representatives, not a backdrop for a lucrative side-hustle.”

The Great Parliamentary Rip-off

The Valentine’s Day Grift: A Westminster Side-Hustle

Lee Anderson allegedly broke Parliamentary rules on commercial filming after recording Cameo videos for Valentine's Day in his Parliamentary office

[@Guardian] pic.twitter.com/IJSy1J3PqJ

— Labour Heartlands (@Labourheartland) March 18, 2026

Anderson joined Cameo just two days after his election, following in the footsteps of his leader, Nigel Farage. While Mr Anderson is a “budget” option on the platform, Mr Farage has turned digital shouting into a lucrative industry, reportedly raking in over £370,000.

Of course, we all remember how Mr Andersson likes to be in front of the camera, even directing it on occasions…

More disturbing is the Guardian’s revelation that Mr Anderson offered tours of Parliament and “a few pints” to his paying Cameo subscribers. This is a direct commodification of the democratic estate. Parliamentary tours are a constituent’s right, not a “prize” to be dangled by a politician to boost his digital engagement metrics.

How Much is Enough?

This “Cameoisation” of politics forces us to confront the uncomfortable reality of the MP’s “package.” We pay these individuals nearly £94,000 a year. We provide them with subsidised dining, second homes, and a travel budget that would make a corporate executive blush.

When is it enough? When does the salary of a legislator become sufficient to command their full, undivided attention?

The British public is currently being served by a class of politicians who treat their seats in the Commons as a “retainer” while they pursue media careers, speaking tours, and digital tip-jars. We are paying for a full-time Parliament but receiving a collection of part-time influencers.

When we zoom out, the Anderson affair is a minor footnote in a much larger scandal of entitlement. Let us look at the cold, hard figures of the “MP package” in 2026:

• The Salary: As of 1 April 2025, the basic MP salary rose to £93,904. This is nearly three times the median UK wage.
• The Second Jobs: While an MP’s salary should be more than enough to ensure focus, many treat it as a retainer. Nigel Farage, for instance, reportedly declared over £870,000 in outside earnings recently.
• The “Work-Life Balance”: Parliament sits for roughly 150 days a year. The rest is “recess.” While many MPs work hard in their constituencies, the optics of six-week summer breaks and lengthy Easter “recesses” look like a parallel reality to a nurse or a factory worker.
• The Perks: We provide them with subsidised bars and restaurants, costing the public millions annually, while school meal budgets are scrutinised to the penny. We pay for their second homes, their staffing, and their travel.

A Crisis of Representation

The argument often used to defend these perks is that we must pay “competitive” rates to attract the “best” people. Yet, looking at the current crop, one wonders if we are merely attracting those best at self-promotion.

When a Member of Parliament views their office, a room steeped in centuries of democratic struggle, as a studio for a £50 shout-out, the dignity of the office is not just diminished; it is liquidated. We are not getting our money’s worth. We are paying for a political class that works for the highest bidder, the loudest TV network, or the most generous Cameo subscriber.

It is time to end the era of the “part-time populist.” We need a ban on second jobs, a stripping back of the Westminster “club” perks, and a salary that reflects the reality of the people they represent. Until then, the “beating heart of democracy” will continue to sound suspiciously like a cash register.

The League Table of Entitlement

While most workers are lucky to see a 3% pay rise, the “Top Five” earners in Parliament have collectively bagged an extra £2 million since the last election, on top of their £93,904 basic salaries.

MP	Party	Est. Outside Earnings	Primary Source
Nigel Farage	Reform UK	£873,000+	GB News, Sky Australia, Brand Ambassador
Geoffrey Cox	Conservative	£686,000+	Legal services/Barrister
Jas Athwal	Labour	£180,000 (est)	Property Rental Portfolio
Bayo Alaba	Labour	£168,000 (est)	Property Rental Portfolio
Nick Timothy	Conservative	£145,000	Media/Columnist

The Multi-Party Grift

The rot is not confined to one side of the aisle. The nature of the “hustle” simply shifts according to the party colour:

• The Right-Wing Media Moguls: Reform and Conservative MPs have colonised the airwaves. Nigel Farage treats the Commons as a side-project, declaring over 1,100 hours of outside work, effectively 140 working days, since his election.
• The Labour Landlords: While the Labour frontbench speaks of renters’ rights, backbenchers like Jas Athwal and Bayo Alaba are raking in six-figure sums from vast property portfolios. Athwal, in particular, faced scrutiny after “toxic mould” was found in his rental units. It is difficult to champion the tenant when your bank balance depends on the landlord.
• The Global Speech Circuit: The precedent set by figures like Theresa May (who earned £2.5 million in the previous cycle) and Boris Johnson persists. Parliament is used as a springboard to the international “pay-to-play” speaking circuit, where an hour of platitudes can earn an MP more than a nurse earns in a year.

Perhaps more scandalous than the money is the time. Analysis shows that 236 out of 650 MPs have declared outside earnings, clocking a combined 32,000 hours of non-parliamentary work in the first eight months of this term.

Six MPs were found to be working the equivalent of a full extra day every week on their second jobs. We are paying for full-time representation and receiving a part-time service. When Geoffrey Cox speaks only eight times in the House while earning nearly £700,000 as a barrister, whose interests is he truly representing?

Labour’s Lost Policy: The Ban on Second Jobs for MPs

Keir Starmer entered Downing Street promising a politics of public service, a cleansing of the Tory-era rot. In November 2021, as Labour leader, he stood before the cameras and called for a ban on most second jobs for MPs, with exceptions only for frontline public service roles like NHS work or army reservists. He spoke of “cleaning up some of the mess,” of applying “common sense” to a system that had allowed parliament to become a side-hustle headquarters.

Yet 18 months into his government, that promise has suffered a strange fate. It has not been defeated in a vote, nor officially abandoned in a statement. It has simply vanished—erased from the political memory as if it never existed. This is the Mandela Effect of Westminster politics: a commitment so firmly made in 2021 that it feels like it must have been real, yet now impossible to pin down in the government’s actual legislative programme.

Against this backdrop of forgotten pledges, the second jobs grift flourishes not because Labour endorses it, but because the moral clarity required to end it has been quietly misplaced.

The message to MPs is unmistakable: the rules may remain on paper, but the will to enforce them has been lost somewhere in the long list of abandoned ideals. Under the Tories, second jobs were a hustle. Under Labour, they have become an accepted fact of parliamentary life—unremarked, unaddressed, and entirely unbecoming of a party that once claimed it would clean up politics.

The Moral Bankruptcy of the “Package”

The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) recently confirmed that MP salaries will rise to £98,599 by April 2026, with an aim to hit £110,000 soon after. They justify this by “benchmarking” against senior roles in civic society.

But a doctor or a headteacher cannot simply nip off to film a Cameo for £50 or spend 20 hours a week advising a gold bullion firm. The “benchmarking” is a fraud because it ignores the unique, sacred nature of the democratic mandate.

Structural reform is no longer a radical suggestion; it is a necessity for national survival. We must ban all second jobs, including media contracts and consultancies, and mandate that any rental income above a modest threshold be taxed back into social housing.

Parliament should be a place of service, not a showroom for personal brands.

The reality is for some people, enough is never enough…

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